


The Truth Untold

by The_Wavesinger



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Coming Home From The War, Extra Treat, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-17 05:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Wavesinger/pseuds/The_Wavesinger
Summary: Walter comes back from the war. But on Samhain, ghosts roam free.
Relationships: Walter Blythe & Anne Shirley & Gilbert Blythe, Walter Blythe/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2019





	The Truth Untold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deliarium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliarium/gifts).

> The title is from Strange Meeting by Wildred Owen.

The body in his arms is dead. He’s dead, and Walter is crying, gunfire raining around him and the slow advance of monsters lost to the wailing of the not-quite-passed whistling across the sky. And he’s holding a dead body and staring up up into the light.

A figure reached out to him, golden hair not-quite wreathed in shadow, hand outstretched in invitation. The same mournful, musical voice he’d heard so many times, in his visions—“Come to me, come with me. You have to let go.” And then a great shadow rising behind him, the deep rumblings of some thousands of treaded monsters, rats scurrying after the Piper—

Walter wakes with a gasp, his heart pounding, sweat running down his forehead.

The full moon outside the window casts light into his room. His room, in Ingleside.

He feels for his sheets, soft and smooth as no trench could ever be. _Real._ The books on his shelves, spines soft and worn. _Real._ The last goldenrod of the season that he’d picked yesterday, still fragrant and so vividly alive. _Real. _The old oak furniture with their knots and scars and ages of history. _Real._ And finally, finally, the letter. Folded on his dresser, kept safe, waiting, waiting. Until—until tomorrow. _Real._

His circuit of the room completed, he sits down, the letter still clutched in his fist.

It would be tomorrow. Tomorrow, or more rightly today now, Walter thinks, glancing at the clock. He’d meet—

His hand shakes so hard the letter dropped onto the hardwood floor.

He doesn’t lean down to pick it up. Maybe, maybe—

This was something he should have done a long time ago. A debt of gratitude owed, and it was five years since. He should have gone looking, earlier.

A hand stretched out, a rescue, and then a kiss, and Walter shivers with that memory, tucks it away, careful. It’s hard to remember now whether it was real, or the dreamings of a fevered mind. It’s hard to remember whether He was real, except the proof is in his hands. Or—on the ground.

Real. It’s real.

Walter takes a deep, shuddering breath.

He hasn’t dreamt up the letter. It’s real.

(He didn’t show it to anyone. He couldn’t bear—

There’s proof, and then there’s _proof_.

But David is real. Golden hair and sea-blue eyes. Or maybe storm-grey eyes and lips that could conquer the world. David, David, laughing David. Not the Piper, not the man wreathed in shadow.

He’s real. He has to be.)

—

“Good morning, Walter!” Mother’s cheerful voice rings out across the kitchen, followed by Father’s deeper greeting.

“Good morning, Mother, Father.” He’s tired. He knows he sounds tired. The ghosts chased him all night, in his dreams, peeping through the window, at his ear and at his back every time he jolted awake. Eventually, he stopped trying to sleep altogether. (He doesn’t know why he keeps trying, except—the demons walk by sunlight and moonlight and they are far, far stronger than anything that haunts his dreams, and that’s a thought he doesn’t have the energy to entertain.)

Mother pursues her lips worriedly, silently. The glances she and Father trade across the table are deafeningly loud, but he can’t—

He goes over to her, on impulse (he’s floating away, rising, rising, something needs to hold him down), puts his arms around her. And Father comes up to him, too, gathers both of them in his arms.

His skin prickles. Goosebumps everywhere, Mother’s and Father’s scents in his nose, warmth enfolding him, trapped, constricted, and he wants to run away, wants to escape this.

_Real._

It’s almost a good feeling.

—

“Your father and I are going to visit Rilla and Ken at the House o’ Dreams this evening,” Mother says over the porridge and mushrooms that’s their breakfast while Susan is away. “We might take a walk around the village. It’s Samhain, after all—we might see some ghosts abroad.”

Ghosts indeed. The icy fingers creepy at Walter, clutch him, whisper at him, the Piper in his ear—

No.

No, not now, and he knows Mother and Father are waiting for him, waiting for whatever he says. Whatever he should say.

“A friend is coming to town. From—” he won’t let it win. He won’t. “From the war. I got a letter from him. I’m sorry, I should have let you know earlier.”

Father shakes his head. “No, no. Do you want me to take you to the station? Or pick him up from the station?”

That’s an idea. It’s drizzling outside, wrapped up in not-quite-fog and droplets not cold enough, yet, to be snow or ice. Weather that no sane person would relish walking through, the weather of haunted things and cobwebbed places. Maybe—but no. He told David already, and besides. “I told him how to get to Rainbow Valley. He’ll be there.”

Rainbow Valley and the Piper, waiting for him.

It’s Samhain, after all. There are sure to be ghosts abroad.

—

Walter is late.

He’s late, because he thinks, he fears, and maybe, so he waited in the old homey Ingleside kitchen until he absolutely couldn't wait anymore, had to take the plunge.

But there’s a figure up ahead, waiting in the shade of the old familiar trees, umbrella held up and coat cinched closed against the cold winter rain.

“You’re here,” Walter breathes, and then he’s in David’s arms, looking into grey eyes, and it’s an old familiar embrace.

“Walter.” David takes Walter’s face between his hands, and then they’re kissing, kissing until their breath runs out, in each other’s arms at last.

(David has sea-blue eyes and golden hair and a German accent, and a bullet hole through his head. David rescued him and took him away from certain death. David held out his hand and led him into No Man’s Land and shielded him with his body.

David is gone, but David is here, and there is an ocean and soft, blood-soaked soil and nothing but woollen cloth and scarves and gloves between them.)


End file.
